Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch by Sally Bedell Smith, Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2012.
Sally Bedell Smith’s book is an easy and enjoyable read that makes you feel you know the Queen once you finish reading it. The book has an easy and engaging style which makes it a rather quick read despite its length of 555 pages. It does not have footnotes on the pages, but the references can be found fairly easily in the notes section. Smith is clearly an admirer of the Queen and leads the reader through her life with coherent themes.
Smith wrote the book because she wanted to know how Queen Elizabeth II leads her days and manages to do what she does. This makes the book particularly useful for us at The Art of Royaling as Smith includes such minor, but intriguing, details on resilience as how the Queen leverages her strong legs to help her stand for long periods of time – thereby projecting her characteristic strength and authority. She also notes how the Queen pulls up tough weeds in the garden when she is frustrated, a useful and productive way to cope with the stresses of daily life.
However, the book only lightly touches on any criticism of the Queen, especially in difficult areas of the Queen’s life and reign, and accordingly lacks some nuanced depth. One example is when Smith mentions the complaints about the Queen Mother’s bank overdraft of £4 million and the lack of the Queen’s action on the issue, but quickly notes that four years later people were quite happy with the spending for the Queen Mother’s funeral. This was a missed opportunity to explore their relationship and the tricky tightrope walk the Queen must manage in dealing with her family and perhaps, like any human being, she doesn’t always get it quite right. In avoiding the difficult conversations, the author is perhaps attempting to maintain a positive overall narrative, but also misses a big opportunity to explore the Queen’s resilience, relevance, and perseverance through life’s major challenges.
Still, I especially liked Smith’s informative, if brief, description of Her Majesty’s youth and the way the Queen was trained by the adults around her for the job she would one day hold. Specifically touching on how she was taught to control her emotions and behavior, how her mother taught her to converse with anyone, and how her nannies and her grandmother kept her grounded and humble – a more deliberate style of training than her father’s upbringing. It is clear from these chapters that the Queen has also benefitted from her innate traits of steadiness while she seems also to have accepted her fate with equanimity from an early age.
I recommend this book as an introduction to those who have yet to read a biography of Queen Elizabeth II. It is a good overview of her life and provides the reader with a good sense of the Queen’s character and how her sense of duty and mental determination, along with relaxation, contribute to the Queen’s resilience. I found it particularly refreshing during these difficult days to read about a determined woman who has carried on in a strong and positive way come what may.
